Cooking Log for First Week of March

[flit]

I just have trouble getting enough calories if I try to rotate my protein sources, so I'm going to drop the egg/dairy rotation for the most part. I will however avoid planning egg-heavy main dishes one week out of three, and dairy-heavy main dishes one week out of three, and will avoid eating meat one week out of three. But it's too hard for me to manage a no-brainer breakfast like my breakfast smoothies if I skip dairy, which means I was suffering all week from late starts and a calorie deficit. Now I'll just watch for reactions to dairy, and only drop it to take a rest if I actually react again. Hopefully I won't on the current sources.

As usual we made more food than we expected. We also noticed that while fresh homemade soup is good, making a big pot of it gets monotonous by day 3 or 4. So we're going to freeze some this week and mix in other soups -- initially from phasing out our pantry staples of soup that I'm trying to wean us off of, and eventually by mixing in homemade soups out of the freezer. I'll also freeze more main dishes than I have been doing, as appropriate. That should keep things a little more varied.

Favorite simple trick: slice garlic thin, add slivered almonds or sliced walnuts, dry-toast in a pan over low heat until golden brown. It's a flavorful and crunchy salad topping. I've done one or the other but never both combined (works fine combined, and you can even toss in some mustard seed too), and I'd sort of forgotten how easy and tasty it was.


Mains:

• done -- Seared and Steamed Chicken -- this stored well and was easy to use and reheat, even though chicken breasts can get a little dry. I would make extra sauce if I made this again, and perhaps add mushrooms.
  
• done -- hickory smoked beef back ribs -- I made barbecue sauce for them today, and then just warmed them in a low oven along with the roasted cauliflour. That with a fresh salad was dinner.
  
• done -- New York Roast -- Brad did this and it turned out to be very easy. Sliced thin, this made deliciously beefy flavored, slightly tough (it IS grassfed and wasn't marinated) roast beef. I liked this both plain and with a mustard-wasabi sauce I whipped up. Brad isn't as fond of "hunks of meat" as I am, but said it was a very good example of its class, and he liked it with the sauce.
  
• done -- shrimp & avocado salad -- Brad made this for lunch today because I was too tired. Yummy.
  
• done -- Salmon rosti -- Planned for tomorrow.
  
• sort of done -- breakfast frittata w/sweet potato and onion -- I never had the energy to make a big frittata for bulk eating, even though I roasted up a bunch of sweet potatoes. I did however make three tiny omelets/frittatas with mung beans in my little six-inch skillet. So kind-of-done, but not as easy as planned. If I plan bulk-cooking for breakfasts in the future I need to get Brad in the loop so he does it if I can't execute, or I end up being too tired to eat anything in the morning.
  
• postponed -- Spiced Lamb Riblets -- we just had too much food to get to these so they stayed in the freezer.
  

Soup and Sides:

• done -- Roasted Garlic and Onion Soup -- this was great but got monotonous by day three or four. Remedies: blend a little finer, freeze half to vary in shelf-stable and freezer soups. Add different things to the soup upon serving to vary the flavor (sherry, sherry vinegar, lemon juice, yogurt, pumpkin seed oil....)
  
• done -- Soup for the rest of the week: used up a box of high-sodium broccoli soup
  
• done -- Freezer cleaner stir-fry -- cleaned out the green beans, asparagus, and shiitake mushrooms in a big spicy stirfry with onion, ginger, and garlic; this wasn't super green looking since it started from frozen veggies, but was tasty.
  
• done -- Roasted cauliflower -- simple and good
  
• postponed -- Roasted veggies: clean out the crisper of watermelon radishes and turnips and maybe beets, trying out the high heat roasting method
  
• postponed -- Roasted parsnips with horseradish (might sub wasabi in as I have that on hand)
  

Fresh Fruit and Veggies

• done -- tomato rice salad -- this used up some avocado too
  
• done -- salads: spinach with smoke-dried tomato dressing, mizuna with rice vinegar and cucumbers, mesclun with cucumbers and bottled dressing (finished a bottle of dressing, yay!)
  
• done -- jicama, pomelo, and fennel -- I took too long and had to toss the jicama, but the pomelo combined nicely with fennel, an orange, some tangelos, cayenne pepper, and some honey to sweeten it up a bit
  
• done -- fruit: this one is always easy.
  

Ingredients, either in the making or that need a plan:

• done -- chicken stock -- reduced, frozen in cupcake tin (for 1-cup servings) & pint jar (for quart)
  
• done -- Spicy molasses barbecue sauce -- I left the ginger out of this recipe because I didn't think it would blend well with the hickory smoked ribs. Subbed in plum cider vinegar for apple cider vinegar, and tomato paste for tomato sauce. It was good and I made enough extra that I froze some.
  
• done -- mizuna -- used in salad
  
• mostly done -- mung bean sprouts -- Munching on plain, adding to salads, and they're great in frittata. Still have some left but will probably finish by end of weekend. Brad doesn't like these nearly as much as I do, so I'll make smaller amounts in the future and save for myself. (He might like them in a curry, but he doesn't like them in salad.)
  
• mostly done -- avocado -- been eating plain over things, and we used some in the shrimp salad today. This was the last week of Hass, I think.
  
• postponed -- strain leftover yogurt to make yogurt cheese -- good thing yogurt keeps!
  
• postponed -- harissa -- bounced to next week along with lamb riblets
  
• postponed -- Bearss limes -- good thing these keep; use some in guacamole and zest & juice them for freezing
  

Optional:

• planning for this week -- beet kvass -- got some fresh beets for kvass, THIS week I want to make it. Using up older beets in roasted root veggie side this week.
  
• planning for this week -- red cabbage saeurkraut -- repurposing this for one of this week's sides.
  
• fresh sardines roasted in vine leaves -- probably not on top of all those fiddly meat dishes; maybe next week, but it HAS been a while since I've had fish
  
• flourless nut butter cookies -- we haven't had time to make sweets or really much desire for them, but these are still at the top of the list when we're interested in sweets again